Subterranean Homesick Erastus Blues ...

Subterranean homesick blues, and other travel insights from an Erastilian!

It’s July aka Erastus, the month of the Golarion calendar named for Erastil, human god of family, harvests, and the hunt. To honor Old Deadeye, I’m traveling around France with my own family, hunting for the bounty of summer harvest season at farmers’ markets and celebrating the French 14 juillet national holiday … and rolling zero physical dice because I didn’t have room for any in my luggage, which was a tactical error and makes me feel all kinds of homesick and blue. 

In fact, in the Pathfinder campaign setting, the 14th of Erastus is celebrated annually in the Varisian city-state of Korvosa. The Founding Festival commemorates the date in 4407 AR when a group of Chelish marines under the command of Field Marshal Jakthion Korvosa selected the site to begin construction of a defensive outpost. Apparently, Korvosans get drunk and shoot off “magical light shows,” just like the French. Or so I’ve heard. Le plus ça change.

I have limited Pathfinder news or juicy gameplay tidbits to report, given that I’m an ocean away from my home lodge and booked solid for three swims a day with my halfling traveling companion. (Although I’m still chiming in on my two ongoing text-based, play-by-post campaigns run over Discord, more of which I’ll unpack in a subsequent post). 

However, in the spirit of looking forward (yeah yeah, I know: there’s no facing in Pathfinder), I’m excited to beef up this newsletter come September aka Rova when I’m finally back home. To that end, here are a couple recurring features I’m aspiring to add to each edition of Ambush Tactics, appearing in each edition right after the PLEASE SUBSCRIBE button which speaking of …

• THE MINI AND THE DICE

I’m really enjoying the craft of staging these top-of-post images I shoot to lead off each newsletter: yes, those are my dice and my minis. And so I want to share a bit of where each component comes from. This month, the mini is Qudqutr Qocks, my wife’s gnome sorcerer from our First Edition Hell’s Rebels adventure. Qocks, a merchant who loved counting large quantities of tiny objects, was 3D printed in metal by the good folks at Hero Forge and painted by yours truly.

The dice set belongs to my wife as well, incidentally: a Call of Cthulhu—inspired set by Polish dicemaker Q Workshop (this color pattern is now out-of-print!) that she used for her Shattered Star character, another sorcerer named Elysii the sylph evoker. Yes, I’m married to a forever-sorcerer.

• LISTEN TO THIS

I got a lot of nice Reddit feedback on my February post about background music for your Pathfinder sessions, so I’m planning to slap together a new gaming playlist each month. This month we’re going back to the well with our old pal Trevor Morris, who scored the new TV series Vikings: Valhalla, a sequel to the original Vikings which debuted on Netflix earlier this year. I might listen to this while posting to a PFS scenario I’m currently playing in (#3-13: Guardian’s Covenant) where our Society agents travel to Port Valen aka Valenhall aka Valhalla, the fabled warrior’s paradise of Ulfen legend.

Check out the new playlist here: Ambush Vikings Valhalla

• TODAY I LEARNED

News flash: Pathfinder Second Edition is an exceedingly rich and complex game system, and I learn something new about it all the time. Here’s my revelation of the month: the clumsy and fatigued conditions both give penalties to AC and Reflex saves, but because these are both status penalties they don’t stack. Why is this important? Because the giant instinct barbarian I play in a Strength of Thousands campaign wields a large bastard sword that gives her the clumsy 1 condition, and relies on the Furious Finish barbarian feat to dish out massive damage at the cost of becoming fatigued. But even when she’s both fatigued and clumsy, my character Artemis still only takes a -1 to AC and Reflex saves, not a -2.

Smash on, you crazy diamond.

• NEW FROM THE WAREHOUSE

My personal tip sheet for juicy new Pathfinder releases: this month, it’s the Dark Archive hardcover from the rulebook series. Not only does this occult-themed book introduce two new classes — the mental-focused spellcasting psychic and the magical-implement-wielding martial thaumaturge — but this book finally lets me play my favorite First Edition character: the time oracle!

• SCREENSHOT PRESENTED WITHOUT CONTEXT

Exactly what it sounds like. 

That’s it. And so, as I tell my players at the conclusion of every Pathfinder module I run:

Adventure!